


Addled

by angel



Category: White Collar
Genre: Confusion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel/pseuds/angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal's not sure what happened.  Peter probably knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A writing experiment that happens to fill the Falling square on my H/C Bingo card.

Neal Caffrey felt like he was floating, disconnected from everything. He was laying on his back, looking up at the sky, and it was the bluest blue that he'd ever seen. He reached for it, wanting to touch it and see if it felt blue, but something or someone gripped his wrist and pushed his arm back down.

“Neal? Are you with me?” 

That sounded like Peter, if Peter were three miles away inside a barrel. Peter would never be inside a barrel. He didn't like small, dark places. But Neal wasn't supposed to know that, so he hoped he didn't say it out loud. 

“Neal?”

The voice sounded funny. All high-pitched and frantic. Was Peter hurt?

Neal tried to turn his head, but someone's hands were on either side of it, pressed against his ears. He didn't like that at all. His ears weren't handles to be held. Wait. Maybe that's why sounds were weird. He tried to push away the hands, but more hands held him down.

“Nnnnngh!” He protested all the manhandling. It would wrinkle his suit. 

“Hey, hey, calm down.” Peter's voice was above him, but Neal couldn't see him. He rolled his eyes around, trying to catch something in his periphery but only managed to make himself dizzy.

“Ugggggh,” he groaned as his stomach flipped. Then he gagged and the hands shifted, rolling him onto his side. He was rewarded with a new view, which he could almost appreciate if he weren't busy retching all over one of Diana's flowy shirts. This one was low cut enough for him to catch a glimpse of something he shouldn't have been looking at before the retching started again.

“Caffrey!” Diana exclaimed, but it was a lot less annoyed that he would have expected. Maybe something was seriously wrong with him. Why else would Diana let him puke all over her without punching him?

“Neal?” 

That was Peter again. Neal wished he'd stop using his name. He was getting tired of it. Maybe he'd change it to Steve. No, he'd used Steve already. And Nick. Something new. Something different. What about Rio? Surely, he could pull off Rio. His blue eyes alone would explain away Rio.

“Hey, Caffrey, stay awake. Medics are almost here.” 

Who was that? He recognized the voice, but he couldn't place... Jones with the phones. Burke the jerk. He'd never thought of one for Diana, but her name didn't rhyme with anything too easy. He'd have to think harder. What was Diana's last name again? Barrett? Bear...something. He was pretty sure.

“Neal! Open your eyes!” Peter was barking at him, and he wanted to laugh when he pictured Peter's head on Satchmo's body. Maybe he did laugh. It was hard to keep track of what was going on. His eyes kept closing without his permission. They were so heavy. Like that sculpture he and Mozzie had liberated from that museum in Paris. The name of it was on the tip of his tongue.

His tongue felt weird. Like it was too big for his mouth. And it tasted like metal. He spluttered, trying to get rid of that nasty taste.

“Sir? Sir, can you tell me your name?” 

Neal jumped, his whole body tensing, when an unfamiliar blonde leaned her face into his field of vision. He groaned as pain shot through all his muscles before settling into his back. What the hell had happened?

“Sir?”

Neal opened his mouth to respond, but the only thing that came to mind was, “Rio.”

“What?!” Peter exclaimed from off to the left this time. Neal still couldn't see him. Was Satchmo being bad? Is that what Peter had raised his voice for?

He tried again to turn his head, but agony exploded through his shoulders and neck. He cried out, gasping for air as the edges of the world liquified and washed him away.

~~!!~~

Peter Burke sat up in the molded plastic visitor's chair and tried to stretch the kinks out of his back. He'd been sitting here for hours, since Neal had been admitted into the hospital and given a private room. 

“How are you doing, Hon?” Elizabeth moved around behind him and started massaging his shoulders. She'd arrived a couple of hours ago with coffee and sandwiches. Then, she'd sent Diana and Jones home to rest while she sat with her stubborn husband and his equally stubborn CI.

He grunted as she pressed into a very sore knot. He had no idea how to answer her question. Neal had been unconscious practically since the EMT had arrived on the scene, and that worried him beyond words. 

“What happened today?” She hadn't had the courage to ask before. Neal looked pretty bad, lying flat in the hospital bed with a cervical collar around his neck and bandages peeking out along his shoulders from the wounds they'd stitched in his back.

Peter spared her most of the details. Neal had gone undercover with a group of ne'er-do-wells, who were also stealing identities to fund their little game of “Spot the Forgery” with most of the major museums in New York. Their base of operations had been the second floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn, which thankfully bordered a park. Someone inside the house had gotten twitchy and suspicious, and there had been a scuffle that ended with Neal defenestrated. He'd landed on his back on the grass in the park, but the sound of his scream as he fell would haunt Peter's nightmares for a very long time.

The sun was peeking over the New York skyline when Neal's doctor came by with good news. He was optimistic that Neal would recover from his injuries with little side effects. The biggest concern was the concussion, but they were monitoring him closely for changes in his mental status. And after some physical therapy for the muscle damage sustained by several large shards of glass, he would, more than likely, be good as new. There would be some scarring, but it would fade with time. 

Peter waited until the doctor was out of earshot to look over at El and say, “He's one lucky kid if all he takes away from this is a few scars.”

Elizabeth nodded and looked over at the young man in question. She reached out to squeeze his hand when he moaned, stirring restlessly but not waking. “When have you ever known him to be anything but lucky?”

He had to concede that point. Neal would be okay. He always was.

~Continued in the Coda

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	2. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By request, this is a coda for Addled, in which Neal wakes and the Burkes are there for him.

Neal's head hurt. It felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to the back of his skull, and they weren't being very nice about it either. 

It took him a while to deal with the pain, compartmentalize it so that he could figure out what had happened and why he felt like he'd been whaled on by a very angry Diana. Surely, he hadn't finally pissed her off enough to actually hit him. No, it had to be something else.

He blinked his eyes open, hoping for a clue in his surroundings, but his vision was too blurry to actually make anything out. 

Suddenly, there were small, cool fingers brushing through his hair, and he startled badly enough to cause the pain to flare back up and try to engulf him.

“Neal?” A familiar, female voice called his name, but he couldn't verbalize anything beyond a groan just yet. He was trying so hard to tuck the agony away again, but it only grew worse.

“Call the nurse,” a different but also recognizable voice said. This one was male, and he had to scrounge through his brain for the name. Peter. Peter was here.

Neal relaxed, letting the pain wash over him. Everything would be okay.

~~!!~~

The lights were dim the next time he woke. He was grateful since that allowed him to focus on the couple curled together in a pair of chairs near his bed. He tried to turn his head but found that he was laying on his side, propped up by a number of pillows, and there was a strange pressure around his neck. His fingers fumbled with the soft cervical collar there, anxiously trying to remove it.

“No, no,” Elizabeth's quiet voice stilled him just as her hands closed over his. “Let that be, sweetie. How are you feeling?”

“Hurts,” he murmured. “What happ'n'd?”

“What do you remember?”

That was a loaded question. Everything was jumbled, and thinking made his head pound again. “Dunno,” he finally said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath to help ride out the misery.

Elizabeth squeezed his fingers and took pity on him. “You fell out a window, but you're going to be okay. You'll be sore and grumpy for a while, I suspect, but you'll heal.”

“Never grumpy,” he protested lightly.

“Uh-huh, sure. I've seen you with the stomach flu,” she shot back gently. Her voice was still pitched low, and she was speaking slowly enough that he could keep up with her.

He grimaced. “Low blow.”

She laughed softly and nodded. “Can I get you anything?”

“Water?”

“I'll go ask the nurse.” She patted his hands and moved them away from his neck brace before leaving the room.

He blinked, trying to stay awake. His lips and mouth were dry, and he really wanted a few sips of water before he fell back to sleep.

Peter was in his line of sight now but was clearly sleeping. He was sitting up with his head canted to the side, resting on his fist. It looked as uncomfortable as any position Neal had ever seen, and it made something warm and fuzzy well up inside him. 

He blinked again and Peter was suddenly awake and sitting right in front of him, as the nurse and Elizabeth stood nearby. He sluggishly rolled his eyes from one to the other, trying to figure out how they'd moved so quickly.

“Mr. Caffrey? Neal? Can you hear me?” the nurse asked.

“Mmhmm.” He cleared his throat and managed to say, “Water?”

“Only ice chips for now,” the nurse replied as someone else shoved a spoonful of amazing, delicious, cool bits of ice into his half open mouth. He closed his eyes, almost moaning as they melted on his tongue. 

He felt the nurse lift his wrist to take his pulse, and then she checked his IV and moved some of his pillows around. Mostly she was keeping him awake, so he opened his eyes and sought out the cup of ice. Peter was holding it.

“More?” He reached for it with a shaking hand, but Peter easily maneuvered around it to give him another small spoonful.

“Are you in pain?” Peter asked, watching him closely. He usually hated that look, like Peter was scrutinizing him to his very core, but he found it hard to care right then.

Neal thought about the question while the ice melted. The pounding in his head was the worst, but it wasn't nearly as bad now as before. There was the tight feeling of stitches in his back that he knew from experience would be hurting if he moved. And then there was his neck, which was stiff and sore. All in all, he mostly just felt achy, and he said so.

Peter nodded and looked up. Neal followed his eyes to the nurse, and she placed something in his hand. “This is your call button. Press it if you need something for the pain, okay?”

“Okay,” he parroted back, sensing that it was the right thing to say. He could keep the pain away if he concentrated hard enough. It wasn't that bad. Elizabeth had said so. Hadn't she?

“Get some rest. I'll be back in to check on you in a couple of hours.”

Neal watched her go before his eyes drifted back to the Burkes. They were once again tangled together on the two chairs they'd pulled up to his bedside. 

“Need anything, Neal?” Peter asked, squirming to get as comfortable as he could in the molded plastic.

“No, 'm good.” He was already drifting off, but he had to say something more, “Th'nks.”

“For what?” Peter whispered as he smoothed Neal's hair off his forehead with a gentle hand. 

The touch further calmed him, and it took all of Neal's energy to answer, “Staying.” He sighed softly, contentedly, as sleep finally claimed him.

~Finis

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